Public Statements

Jobs Report: "A Part-Time Recovery," Brady Says

Statement

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Vice Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, today called the Bureau of Labor Statistics' report that the economy added only 104,000 new private sector jobs in September, "another reminder of the failure of President Obama's economic policies. It cements this recovery as the worst in private sector job creation since World War II."

"The decline in the unemployment rate was driven primarily by an increase of 582,000 in the number of workers employed involuntarily in part-time jobs. These workers need and want full-time jobs."

"At this point in the recovery, we should be seeing job gains in the private sector in excess of 250,000 per month and real GDP growth higher than 3.0%. Instead, we continue to see anemic job creation and growth below 2%. That's stagnation, not recovery," Brady added.

Brady continued, "If this recovery was just average, there would be another 3.9 million private sector jobs, and if it had measured up to the strong Reagan recovery of the 1980s, there would be another 6.9 million private sector jobs."

"While the labor force participation rate increased by 0.1 percentage point in this release, it has declined significantly over the course of the recession. If the participation rate had remained at the level of 65.0% when the unemployment rate peaked at 10.0% in October 2009, the unemployment rate would be 9.8%. People giving up and dropping out of the labor force is not a sign of recovery."